I was by "my" park last weekend and stopped in to say Hi and introduce myself. They are excited about the project and are really glad for the "expertise". The park naturalist will be the goto person at this park. They kind of have an idea of the area they want there cache in.
They are planning on featuring a part of the park with ruins on a old township and may put the cache there.
It really was just a quick meet and greet and we will talk in a few months. This should be fun!_________________Dinnae fash yersel (don't worry yourself)

I ran into my park manager at a meeting Thursday night. He said the state had had a meeting this past week and parks are getting more details. So yesterday I called up and interviewed him on it for a "tease" news story this coming week (and Esko, I may e-mail you to get a couple quotes; be looking for that).

Sounds like the demonstration parks and featured parks for a region have been set. Wondering if it might be good to let the geocachers know that info (if the board has been notified of it), so they know which caches will require a bit more work?

(Hey Archer, neither your park nor mine is a demonstration park or the "final" park for southern MN. Staff at Forestville is too involved with the new horse pass program to take on anything new... and at Whitewater, it's obvious... the rebuilding after the flood.)

I was reading through stuff on here... was it ever decided that geocachers do need to help more at the demo parks?

Whether or not a person is hooked up with a demo park (which shound have GPS units available for public use), the geocache owners for a park might somehow want to help their park with a program to kick this thing off... and/or at other times. My manager stressed he would welcome that kind of involvement. As he said, talking about the sport, types of caches a person could find, neat things found through geocaching, neat travel bugs, etc. So that's an idea that could be kicked around, whether you, as the MnGCA, want to think of a set outline on here as a basis for such a program, or let a geocacher kick around the idea with his or her park people, to see if they would want that.

My manager ran down four or five ideas they had in mind for spots for caches. Some are definitely off the beaten path, so that's cool. Although that leads to a question: I take it these caches can be moved to another location if there starts to be a path beaten down to them? One of the possible locations he mentioned involved wading across the river (yes, the river and not just the creek we waded across to the earthcache, LOL) and up a somewhat steep hillside, all offtrail. So, if that started to get worn down, could the cache be moved to another of their location suggestions? Or a location that's nearby, although once a trail starts to form, people would use it, me thinks... Or do we need to just be very careful with placement from the start?

Thanks again for setting this all up, Esko. I think us geocachers are excited. The park staff is excited! Good all around.

Coordinates for the finals will be obtained by email the same as other caches of this type. That is the reason for having the coordinates for the final available from the board as well. If someone is on the road, it would be nice if they could obtain they numbers in a timely fashion.

If I understand this correctly, this type of cache is no longer being listed.

Good point. The email for disbursing the coords to the "final" for the region probably shouldn't be allowed, but the coords could be arrived at in the usual manner instead (each cache container in the region has a piece of the info needed to generate the coords for the "final").

A mystery cache with the coordinates ahead of time would be greatly appreciated for planning a road trip as some of these parks are quite far away to travel back to. As I understand each MN150 cache will have a unique card to collect and maybe that could be used as proof of visit??

The caches will have a name and a web page form so that the cache pages are consistent. The state will be providing artwork and the basic html file which will be available through the MnGCA and hopefully the state. The name is going be something along the lines of Minnesota Geocaching History Challenge – Fort Snelling or Minnesota Geocaching History Challenge – Soudan Underground Mine.

I met with Kathio's assistant manager today and picked a spot. We talked about naming the cache and I was planning on writing up the page and submitting it to him for approval.
Then, when I got home, I read the above. Is this still happening? Should I wait for a form before doing anything else?

KBayNPapaBear and I have met with both of my park managers so far. I'll tell you what, both were very nice people and very excited to be participating in this program. Although, I am somewhat disappointed in the lack of involvement we're going to be allowed.

- DNR will own the caches
- DNR will list the caches
- DNR will name the caches
- DNR will maintain the caches
- Our park managers already had spots picked out that they wanted us to check out

There was nothing left for us to do with the exception of taking a couple of averages and burn fuel. Don't get me wrong... I want to be a part of this. But it seems as if there is no room.

Now, one thing KBayNPapaBear and I discussed while doing our visits this weekend is, it seems to make a LOT of sense to be the responsible cacher to get OTHER caches permitted and placed into these parks so there is MORE than just ONE cache. That's the approach we're going to take to make up for the lack of particpation in the state program.

We have copies of permits and some perspective hidey holes... now if we can just get them approved without interfering with the other events happening.

KBayNPapaBear and I have met with both of my park managers so far. I'll tell you what, both were very nice people and very excited to be participating in this program. Although, I am somewhat disappointed in the lack of involvement we're going to be allowed.

- DNR will own the caches
- DNR will list the caches
- DNR will name the caches
- DNR will maintain the caches
- Our park managers already had spots picked out that they wanted us to check out

There was nothing left for us to do with the exception of taking a couple of averages and burn fuel. Don't get me wrong... I want to be a part of this. But it seems as if there is no room.

I didn't hear any of this from my park manager today. He did have the spot picked out, but he did want my opinion about it.
I guess some clarification is needed here. I agree with bflentje. What will my involvement be, if the DNR is going to do all that bflentje listed?

KBayNPapaBear and I have met with both of my park managers so far. I'll tell you what, both were very nice people and very excited to be participating in this program. Although, I am somewhat disappointed in the lack of involvement we're going to be allowed.

- DNR will own the caches
- DNR will list the caches
- DNR will name the caches
- DNR will maintain the caches
- Our park managers already had spots picked out that they wanted us to check out

There was nothing left for us to do with the exception of taking a couple of averages and burn fuel. Don't get me wrong... I want to be a part of this. But it seems as if there is no room.

I didn't hear any of this from my park manager today. He did have the spot picked out, but he did want my opinion about it.
I guess some clarification is needed here. I agree with bflentje. What will my involvement be, if the DNR is going to do all that bflentje listed?

That is the list of things I've compiled between the two land managers we met with over two days at Great River Bluffs and Sakatah. I am more than prepared to be incorrect, in fact, I hope our list is not accurate. But, I am sad to say, it looks pretty solid.

KBayNPapaBear and I have met with both of my park managers so far. I'll tell you what, both were very nice people and very excited to be participating in this program. Although, I am somewhat disappointed in the lack of involvement we're going to be allowed.

- DNR will own the caches
- DNR will list the caches
- DNR will name the caches
- DNR will maintain the caches
- Our park managers already had spots picked out that they wanted us to check out

There was nothing left for us to do with the exception of taking a couple of averages and burn fuel. Don't get me wrong... I want to be a part of this. But it seems as if there is no room.

I didn't hear any of this from my park manager today. He did have the spot picked out, but he did want my opinion about it.
I guess some clarification is needed here. I agree with bflentje. What will my involvement be, if the DNR is going to do all that bflentje listed?

That is the list of things I've compiled between the two land managers we met with over two days at Great River Bluffs and Sakatah. I am more than prepared to be incorrect, in fact, I hope our list is not accurate. But, I am sad to say, it looks pretty solid.

That is pretty much the impression I got too, I just offered suggestions about placement and took coords. The park staff will do all maintenance, own the cache, etc._________________"We never seek things for themselves-what we seek is the very seeking of things"-Pascal